The President of the United States 

By Gaillard Hunt 



The State Historical Society of Wisconsin 
Separate No. 165 

From the Proceedings of the Society for 1915 









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The President of the United States 

By Gaillard Hunt 

*• 



The State Historical Society of Wisconsin 
Separate No. 165 

From the Proceedings of the Society for 1915 



The President of the United States 


By Gaillard Hunt 
1 

“What sort of government is that of the United States?” asked 
Napoleon of Baron Humboldt when the Baron returned from 
America in 1804. 

“One, Sire, that is neither seen nor felt,” was the answer. 

Go into a railway car, and, if the travelers are of the usual 
order, you will not find one who can tell you the names of the 
members of the president’s cabinet. When I was in charge of the 
exhibit of the Department of State in the Government Building 
at the World’s Fair at Chicago in 1893, I was constantly asked by 
perfectly respectable people to what state the exhibit belonged. 
They knew of the existence of the Treasury Department because 
of the money and of the Post Office Department from the mail, 
and, of course, they knew something of the army and navy, but, 
in the main, the national government was a sealed book to them. 
They lived comfortably and patriotically without seeing or feeling 
it; indeed, their comfort and patriotism were due partly to the 
fact that they did not see it or feel it. Perhaps the average 
citizen of the present day gives less attention to the national 
government than the^ average citizen gave to it when it first 
began to operate. If this is so, it is because the government is 
now a settled thing and it was then an experiment which every¬ 
body was watching; but there never was a time when the rank 
and file of citizens knew much about its operations. This 
ignorance is accounted for by the conclusive reason that it has 
not been necessary for them to know. Nevertheless, the govern¬ 
ment has been a greater factor in developing the national character 
than it would have been if it had laid its strong hand upon every 
citizen every day. Its influence has come from the things it has 

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The President of the United States 


not done. It has allowed nature to do her own work without 
harmful interference. After all the boasting of our power nature 
effectually controls us. She will give a great destiny to a country 
where the land is abundant and rich and the climate healthful 
and invigorating, if the people have sound traditions and are not 
cramped in their expansion by too many laws. 

There is one feature of the government, however, of which no 
one is ignorant and which has exerted positive influence upon the 
development of the national character. The people in the 
railway car all know that the president of the United States is 
Woodrow Wilson, and the thousands of people who looked with 
uncomprehending eyes upon the sign “Department of State” at 
the World’s Fair all knew that there was a president and that his 
name was Grover Cleveland. There never has been a time, even 
when the president was commonplace or an unpopular man, when 
it was possible to find any American who was old enough to know 
anything and did not know who he was. This common knowl¬ 
edge binds the people together. It is national and popular; 
it pervades all classes and all sections. The incumbent of the 
presidency is the one national officer for whom or against whom 
every voter has voted; consequently, all of them have a feeling of 
property in him. Yet no divinity doth hedge him, and he has 
never given rise to a feeling such as the ordinary Englishman used 
to have for his king. It is impossible to picture an American 
innkeeper, for example, defining the president in the spirit of 
John Willet’s description of a prince in Barnaby Budge: 

“Did you ever hear tell of mermaids, sir?” said Mr. Willet. 

“Certainly I have,” replied the clerk. 

“Very good,” said Mr. Willet. “According to the constitution of mermaids, 
so much of a mermaid as is not a woman must be a fish. According to the con¬ 
stitution of young princes, so much of a young prince (if any thing) as is not 
actually an angel, must be godly and righteous.” 

Nevertheless, without supposing him to be an angel or even 
always godly and righteous, the Americans have shown that they 
are well satisfied with that provision of their government which 
gives them a president. Upwards of two thousand amendments 
have been proposed to the Constitution from time to time, as 
evidence of passing discontent with its various features, and fewer 

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of them have been directed against the functions of the president 
than against any other important feature. 

The purpose of this lecture is to show how the office became 
what it is and the effect it has had upon the growth of American 
nationality. 


II 

In 1765, twenty-three years before the Constitution of the 
United States was adopted, Sir William Blackstone published his 
great work on precedent, which he called Commentaries on the 
Laws of England. “The doctrine of the law then is this:” he said, 
“that precedents and rules must be followed, unless flatly absurd 
or unjust.” But precedent and rules seldom seemed absurd or 
unjust to him; the laws of England were the very acme of 
human wisdom in his eyes, and to prove this point he directed his 
argument. Thus it was that, writing about the harmony of 
human customs, he reached the same safe harbor of conclusion as 
Alexander Pope, in his poem on the harmony of the moral law, 
which he called an Essay on Man: 

All nature is but art, unknown to thee; 

All chance, direction, which thou canst not see; 

All discord, harmony not understood; 

All partial evil, universal good: 

And spite of pride, in erring reason’s spite. 

One truth is clear. Whatever is, is right. 

Blackstone was treating of a body of laws based upon customs 
which had prevailed for so long a time that the memory of man 
ran not to the contrary. He was expounding a constitution of 
government which had come slowly and gradually, every feature 
of it anchored firmly by prolonged acceptance. It had come out of 
more than five centuries of national life. 

What would he have said, if he had been called upon to comment 
upon a constitution of government which had been made in four 
months? How would he have approached a fundamental law which 
had had no infancy, but had sprung full-grown from the brains of 
those who made it, as Minerva came from the head of Jupiter? Rea¬ 
soning, as he did, from the established precedent, he would have 
been confounded by this unorthodox statute; his whole system of 

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logic would have stood helpless in its presence. Yet, there it was— 
seven articles, twenty-one sections, about one hundred para¬ 
graphs ; ratified and accepted as the supreme law of the land after 
a debate of only eight months’ duration; entrusted to twenty-two 
senators, sixty representatives and one executive to construe 
and put into operation. 

How were they to construe it? The science of Blackstone availed 
them nothing. Here were no court decisions, no luminous exposi¬ 
tions and learned commentaries accepted as authority to guide 
them. Nor could they explore the intentions of the makers of the 
law, for the makers had sat behind closed doors, and their debates 
were not published till fifty years after they had taken place. The 
Constitution was really at the mercy of those who put it into 
operation. 

They had listened to the exposition of its making which had been 
given during the brief period that elapsed between the close of the 
Convention which framed it and the ratification. Especially, 
they had listened to the exposition of The Federalist, a series of 
papers known to have been written for the most part by two prom¬ 
inent members of the Convention and to be worthy of serious 
attention; but even The Federalist only gave the opinions of the 
writers; there was nothing definitive about it. Alexander Hamilton 
wrote the numbers which reviewed the office of the presidency, 
and, among other things, said that the president’s veto power over 
acts of Congress would hardly ever be used. He drew an analogy 
between this power and the right of the king of England to dis¬ 
approve acts of Parliament, which had not been exercised for 
more than a century. He said that the participation of the Senate 
in making treaties was concurrent with the power of the president 
to make treaties. He meant that the two would work together in 
drawing up treaties, and that the Senate must finally consent to 
them. He said, also, that the consent of the Senate would be 
necessary to the displacement as well as to the appointment of 
officers of government. Evidently, he conceived of the Senate as 
having a participation in federal patronage equal with that of the 
president. He thought that the executive duties of the Senate 
would require it to be in session often when the House was not in 
session. He had it in his mind as an executive council constantly 
advising the president. He did not prognosticate such an office 

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as the presidency became immediately after the government 
began. 

Nor was there any profit to those who were intrusted with the 
duty of putting the government into operation in examining the 
legislative, executive, and judicial branches of other govern¬ 
ments, for conditions in foreign countries were entirely different 
from conditions here. They derived some assistance from their 
own experience, however. They had lived as colonists under the 
British crown; they had had state governments; they had had a 
confederated general government. The confederated govern¬ 
ment had been wholly a congress, and all of the states had legis¬ 
latures of two chambers, except Pennsylvania which had one 
chamber. Therefore, the duties of a congress were fairly well 
understood. The judiciary, too, was not wholly a new invention, 
because all the states had supreme courts, and, during the Revo¬ 
lution, there had been a federal court of appeals in cases of cap¬ 
ture on water. Moreover, a court could proceed deliberately, 
feeling its way, meeting each case as it arose, listening to ex¬ 
haustive arguments before it reached a decision. A presiding 
officer over the government was a familiar idea, also, and the 
title of president was not a novelty. Joseph Galloway’s plan of a 
continental government introduced in the Continental Congress 
of 1774 included a president general. The Continental Congress 
had a presiding officer called “the President of the United States 
in Congress Assembled.” In Delaware, New Hampshire, and Penn¬ 
sylvania the chief executive officer was called the president. But 
Galloway’s president general was to be appointed by the king and 
to have a council chosen by the people; the president of Con¬ 
gress had no power greater than any other member, and the chief 
magistrates of the states all had councils, which they did not select 
themselves, to share their power and responsibility. In the Con¬ 
stitutional Convention, James Madison correctly described them 
as being little more than cyphers. As a matter of fact, therefore, 
the precedents with reference to the presidential office had very 
little influence in developing the powers of that office. 

Let us examine the intention of the makers of the Constitution 
with reference to the presidency, ascertaining it by the revelations 
of later years. When they began their deliberations they had 
not intended to make the office one of overweening im- 

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The President of the United States 


portance. The Virginia plan had proposed that there should 
be a national executive to execute the laws, but the judiciary was 
to be associated with it in reviewing state and national legislation. 
The Jersey plan contemplated a plural executive with no power 
over foreign affairs. Hamilton’s outline, however, suggested a 
chief executive with powers such as the president afterwards 
assumed. He was to have a negative on all laws about 
to be passed, the power to make treaties with the advice and 
consent of the Senate, absolute power of appointment of the heads 
of departments and power of nominating all other officers to the 
Senate. But he was to hold office for life, and the plan found no 
supporters in the Convention. After three months of debate, it 
was agreed that the Senate should have the treaty-making power 
and the appointment of ambassadors and judges. A change of 
feeling towards the presidency came in the latter days of the 
Convention, induced, doubtless, by a realization that the Senate 
was being given too much power. Unwilling to trust it with 
unrestricted power over appointments to office and the conduct 
of foreign affairs, these functions were given in large part to the 
president; unwilling to trust them wholly to the president the 
Senate was put in surveillance over his exercise of them. As the 
article providing for the president was finally framed it gave him 
too much power in the opinion of at least two of the three members 
of the Convention who refused to sign the Constitution. George 
Mason thought his duties were too loosely defined and that he 
ought to have a council, and Edmund Randolph was unwilling to 
entrust the executive authority to one man and wanted a com¬ 
mission. 

Outside of the members of the Convention, those who criticized 
the Constitution always criticized the provision for the president. 
Thomas Jefferson, for example, said that his elegibility to re¬ 
jection might result in one man holding the office for life and 
attempting to name his own successor. 

That part of the Constitution which provided for a president 
defined his duties briefly. He must be the commander-in-chief 
of the army and navy; he might, if he chose, ask the opinions of 
the heads of departments on questions relating to the business of 
their offices; he was to make treaties by and with the advice and 
consent of the Senate; subject to the same restrictions he must 


Wisconsin Historical Society 


appoint all the higher officers of government; he must give 
Congress information of the state of the Union and make recom¬ 
mendations to it; he could approve or disapprove bills; he must 
execute the laws. Taking the office as thus described, construing 
its duties in the light of the experience which lay back of it and 
such explanations of it as had been made, and especially the 
explanation in The Federalist, giving weight to the objections to 
it which well-meaning men had expressed, let us see what the 
first president could have made of it. 

Under the right to ask for the opinions of heads of departments, 
he could have put the weight of responsibility for executive acts 
upon them, by making public their opinions and being guided by 
them. As they were appointed upon the advice and consent of 
the Senate, he could have made the Senate responsible for their 
selection by asking its advice in advance of the selection. They 
would then have been like the executive councils of the states. 
He could have made the Senate the chief agency in all appoint¬ 
ments, thus avoiding that part of his duties which would surely 
involve the greatest personal embarrassment to him and would 
surely arouse the greatest personal enmity towards him. He 
could have made himself the mere agent of the Senate in the 
conduct of foreign affairs by consulting it before he acted. He was 
the head of the army and navy, it is true, but he was not expected 
to exercise command in person, and Congress had complete control 
over the size of the military establishment and might reduce it to 
nothing if it chose to do so. Moreover, the authority to declare 
war was reserved exclusively to Congress, and this gave it control 
over the army and navy for the main purpose of their existence. 
His messages and recommendations to Congress could be as brief 
and perfunctory as he might choose to make them. He was not 
obliged to veto bills he disapproved, nor even to agree to those he 
approved, but might allow them to become laws ten days after 
Congress passed them without any action on his part. If he had 
taken this limited view of his powers and had made himself a 
mere presiding officer over the government, he would not have 
antagonized the friends of the Constitution and he would have 
conciliated many of its opponents. 

Let us see what he did. Consultation of the heads of depart¬ 
ments he made an internal arrangement of his office. He did 

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The President of the United States 


not make public their opinions, and he adopted or rejected them 
as he chose. He took the whole responsibility for executive 
acts. Upon the Senate he put the responsibility only of con¬ 
firming or rejecting the nominations to office which he made. 
He did not consult it before he made the nominations. Under 
the leadership of Madison the House of Representatives deter¬ 
mined that he had power to remove public officials without con¬ 
sulting the Senate. In the conduct of foreign affairs, as in 
appointments to office, he construed the Senate’s power to 
extend to approving or disapproving what he did and he allowed 
it no participation in doing it. The “advice and consent” of the 
Senate he construed as meaning merely the knowledge and con¬ 
firmation of his acts by that body. His messages at the opening 
of each session of Congress were programs of the legislation which 
he thought Congress ought to pass. He inspected each bill before 
he permitted it to become a law, and three years after he had been 
in office he returned a bill to Congress with a statement of the 
reasons why it ought not to become a law. All of these things 
he did soon after he had settled in his office and had had oppor¬ 
tunity to study his duties and to receive advice concerning them. 
Like everybody else, when he first assumed office, he was in 
doubt about the powers which belonged to it. 

Immediately after the Constitutional Convention adjourned, 
Madison described the Senate as “the great anchor of the govern¬ 
ment.” It was generally believed, as Hamilton had said in The 
Federalist, that it would be in session nearly all the time and that 
the president would consult it in person. The picture was in 
men’s minds of the president and Senate sitting together on 
executive business. Many of the senators thought that the 
president should make his nominations to office orally to the 
assembled Senate, and that the Senate should then and there say 
“Yes” or “No” to them. Washington, himself, told a committee 
of the Senate on August 10, 1789, that the Senate was a council 
to the president in the matter of appointments and treaties. 
He thought he and they could consult sometimes in the president’s 
house and sometimes in the Senate chamber. Before he had been 
elected president he gave it as his view that appointments to 
office might be left to the heads of the departments, or, perhaps 
referred to the governors of the states. He entered upon his 

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office with no definite preconceived notions concerning it. He had 
presided over the Constitutional Convention and knew as well 
as any man what it had meant to do. The fact that he did not 
know what the president was expected to do is fair proof that the 
Convention did not itself know. The belief that the Senate 
would be the most important part of the new government was 
general, and, in consequence, the most influential men sought 
election to that body. It opened with a great array of influential 
public men. Oliver Ellsworth, Charles Carroll, Rufus King, 
Robert Morris, Richard Henry Lee and others of equal importance 
were among the members. Unhappily for its prestige and power, 
it began its career by making a serious blunder, which showed 
that it had not correctly estimated the force which was destined 
to have more influence upon the government than any other. 
It seemed to think, in fact, that it would make itself the most 
powerful part of the government by placing itself beyond the 
reach of that force. So it sat behind closed doors, and public 
opinion could not influence its proceedings. The people, however, 
not knowing what it was doing, became suspicious that it was 
plotting against them. In the effort to protect itself against the 
influence of their applause or censure it received only the censure. 
As a consequence, the able men who sat in it found themselves 
neglected and their influence diminishing. Ellsworth, Carroll, 
Lee and several others resigned before their terms expired, and 
the personnel of the Senate deteriorated in importance. The 
House of Representatives, on the other hand, held open sessions 
and caught the attention of the country. It was given credit for 
the legislation which started the government, and from it came 
the leadership which shaped public policies. 

Thus it was shown in the beginning that there was such a 
thing as national public opinion in America. It had existed 
during the Revolution; in fact, the war could not have been 
carried through without it. It had an outlet then in the Con¬ 
tinental Army, with officers and soldiers coming from all parts 
of the country and a commander-in-chief over the whole. After 
the peace it almost disappeared. The common purpose which 
had called it into being had been accomplished, and the civil 
government of the continent was more calculated to stifle than 
to invigorate it. In Congress, the votes were by states; the 

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The President of the United States 


individual delegates were subordinated to the states; the debates 
were not published, and no man could make a continental repu¬ 
tation by continental service. In the period between the Revo¬ 
lution and the Constitution no continental characters were pro¬ 
duced. 

One manifestation of the existence of national public opinion 
which the Revolution brought out was the demand for a national 
hero, and the insistence that George Washington should play 
that part was general. The cold light of history has shown that 
the contemporaneous estimate of him was correct, but a hero 
America would have had, even if it had been obliged to make 
one out of second-rate material. 

In the course of a conversation, during the closing years of his 
life, Madison said that the basis of Washington’s power during 
the Revolution was the perfect confidence everybody had in 
his “incorruptibility.” If that confidence had been shaken, 
he said. General Greene would have been put in his place. The 
conviction of his incorruptibility was a sentiment which bound 
the continent together. It was felt as strongly by the people 
of Georgia and Massachusetts as it was by the Virginians. 

To return for a moment to the intention of the makers of the 
Constitution with respect to the president, it should be remarked 
that the leading minds wished him to be a representative of the 
people of the whole country and that this was almost the only 
definite idea they had concerning the office. Gouverneur Morris 
said he ought to be given sufficient vigor to pervade every part 
of the Union, so as to preserve it, and that he must be “the 
general guardian of the national interests.” Madison said he 
must act for the people, not for the states. Randolph, who 
wanted a plural executive, nevertheless said it must be chosen 
in such a manner as to secure the confidence of the people. John 
Rutledge suggested that the title of the executive should be 
“Governor of the United People and States of America.” James 
Wilson, George Mason, and several other members wanted him 
elected directly by the people. The employment of special 
electors, as the only intermediary between the office and direct 
popular election, approached popular election and seemed to 
avoid its supposed dangers. It brought the president very close 

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to the people. It swept aside the state governments as barriers 
between him and them. 

There was never a question of who should be chosen to be the 
first president. This was a national office and the national hero 
must fill it. Thus the presidential office began operations, sup¬ 
ported by public confidence. The other parts of the new govern¬ 
ment must prove themselves, but George Washington had already 
proved himself. As soon as the Constitution was ratified Hamil¬ 
ton and Madison told Washington that his service as the first 
president would be essential to the successful inauguration of 
the new government. 

He distrusted his own capacity to preside over the govern¬ 
ment, however. After he had served for three years he had a 
frank conversation with Madison in which he disclosed what he 
considered to be his deficiencies. He then revealed the doubts 
of his equipment which had worried him before his election. 
He said he was not a lawyer and could not judge legal questions, 
that he was not trained in civil government and that he was too 
sensitive in temperament to consider calmly questions which 
came before him. So he consulted freely with those who had legal 
knowledge and were trained in civil affairs. The two with whom 
he advised most at the beginning of his term were Hamilton and 
Madison, both then fresh from their joint efforts to have the 
Constitution ratified, and, as yet, in full agreement in their 
political views. The nature of the advice which they gave 
him with reference to the functions of his office is not a matter 
of doubt. Hamilton’s explanation in The Federalist of the limited 
powers of the president and the dependence of the president 
upon the Senate did not stand in the way of his advising the 
president to exercise his duties independently. He advised him 
to exercise them in such a way as to bring the office into as close 
resemblance as possible to the plan which he had laid before the 
Constitutional Convention and which he believed to be the 
best. As Madison explained some years later, Hamilton en¬ 
deavored to carry the government into channels where he thought 
it ought to flow, without reference to the arguments which had 
been used to secure its ratification. Madison’s own views on 
the subject of the office are clearly indicated in a letter he wrote 
to Edmund Randolph on May 31, 1789. “I think it best,” 

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he said, “to give the Senate as little agency as possible in Execu¬ 
tive matters, and to make the President as responsible as possible 
in them.” 

But there was a popular conception of the president’s duties. 
Naturally, it manifested itself with reference to the personal 
side of the office and the power which the president had to confer 
the emoluments and the honors of public office. Washington 
was left in no doubt that the people generally considered him 
to be the fountain of federal patronage. As soon as the Con¬ 
stitution had been ratified and before he had been elected presi¬ 
dent, the applications for office began to pour in upon him, it 
- being assumed that he would be the first president, and the 
solicitations increased after his election. Very few of them 
were addressed to him and the Senate jointly; nearly all of them 
were made to him alone. 

And this completes our examination of the reasons why the 
president became in the beginning of the operation of the gov¬ 
ernment an officer of great independent power. There was no 
definite understanding of the nature of his duties and he was left 
to construe them for himself. The Senate which might have 
disputed the independent exercise by him of certain functions 
was too weak to do so, because it was not supported by public 
confidence. Those who advised the president with reference 
to the functions of his office were in favor of a strong, independent 
executive. Public opinion recognized him as having control of 
appointments to federal offices. The people recognized the office 
as their own and put their hero in it and gave it their confidence 
and support. 


Ill 

Probably no feature of the government has had so happy an 
effect upon the destiny of the country as that part which makes it 
difficult to add to or change the features of the government. When 
a demand for amendment emanates from the people generally 
and becomes fixed, the amendment follows almost automatically, 
but a passing desire for change, a mere fluctuation in public senti¬ 
ment, the wish of a bare majority cannot be written into the 
constitution of government. In consequence, we have realized 

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the advantages which Blackstone saw in a settled state of things. 
“Stability in government,” he said, “is essential to national 
character and to the advantages annexed to it, as well as to that 
repose and confidence in the minds of the people, which are 
among the chief blessings of civil society.” 

As we were fortunate in having a government so limited in its 
field of operation that it did not interfere with our natural de¬ 
velopment, so were we happy in being able to form our nationality 
without foreign interference. This nation, at least, is its own 
work, and has developed without neighbors, allies or enemies to 
bend it as it grew. The influence which an ally might have had 
can be guessed by a glance at the effect of our alliance with France. 
For a time we imitated that country. We became less religious 
than we had been; we cultivated a confused philosophy concerning 
liberty which was not congenial to our mental habits; we sang 
French songs; we wore French pantaloons. If the alliance had 
lasted after our Revolution, the American character would have 
been appreciably affected by it. Fortunately, it terminated with 
the war, and soon there was friction between the two countries, 
then a breach, and France became unpopular. She is the only ally 
we have ever had. Our foreign wars since the Revolution have 
not lasted long and have brought no foreign occupation of Ameri¬ 
can territory, so our English- and Spanish-speaking enemies have 
made no impression on our character. That an enemy may make 
such an impression is indicated by our experience with the Indians. 
The founders of the nation were fighting them constantly, and 
Indian warfare was a part of the life of the pioneers of the West 
even up to our day. Many men were obliged to think of Indians 
incessantly and so came to acquire some of their attributes. It is 
impossible to study the character of Andrew Jackson, for example, 
who was only a pronounced example of a type, without seeing in 
him many of the faults and virtues which Indians were supposed 
to possess. He harbored revenge; he thought it no sin to hate; he 
was merciless in his enmity; he looked upon personal courage as 
the greatest of virtues; but he was mild and hospitable towards 
his friends and he never forgot a kindness. 

Nor has our development been appreciably affected by foreign 
neighbors; indeed, most of the territory contiguous to ours has 
been uninhabited. On the northeast boundary is a civilization as 

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old as ours, and its influence is visible in the region which touches 
it, but this is only a spot of the country. If a populous Canada had 
stretched along the whole of our northern frontier we would 
have seen a decided Canadian influence upon our national growth. 
On our southern border there have been only a few feeble Spanish¬ 
speaking settlements, which have had no appreciable effect on their 
more virile neighbors. 

We have never had any considerable body of foreigners within 
our borders, retaining alien ideas of government and society, 
exerting, willfully or unconsciously, foreign influence upon domes¬ 
tic policy and life. Emigrants to this country have always defi¬ 
nitely abandoned their foreign nationality and sought admission to 
membership in the American nation. The instant they are ad¬ 
mitted they have the same rights and privileges, and the same obli¬ 
gations and responsibilities, as native-born Americans. One of 
them cannot be elected president of the United States; that is his 
only disability; he may hold any other office of honor or power. 
When a foreigner is naturalized as an American, he is required, not 
only to swear allegiance to the United States, but to renounce 
specifically by name the foreign allegiance he is about to throw 
off. There can be no divided allegiance on his part; he must be 
wholly American. His naturalization is an espousal, and he must 
forsake the fatherland or mother country and cleave only unto 
the new nationality. No foreigners, however, have ever come to 
this country with the idea of changing it. Their object has always 
been to change themselves. 

The very stability of the government, however, has awakened a 
suspicion in the minds of many people that we must have out¬ 
grown it, and the argument is often advanced that a government 
which was made for a scattered population of three millions of 
people, living in a fringe of territory along the seacoast, cannot be 
suitable to a great continent, one of the largest domains in the 
world, with a population of nearly a hundred million people. 
Without stopping to inquire whether the principles of government 
suitable to a small country are different from the principles suitable 
to the government of a large country, it should be remarked that 
for governing purposes the United States was larger in 1789 than 
it is now. Imagine a scholar of Madison, Wisconsin, going to 
Nome, Alaska, to lecture before an intellectual audience, to meet 

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his friends there, to see the historical treasures of the place, 
to enlarge his knowledge by a visit of a day or two, and then to 
come back to Madison. It would take him a long time to get 
to Nome—more than a month certainly—the journey would 
be expensive, if not actually dangerous, in fact, it would not 
be feasible for a scholar in Madison to go to Nome to deliver 
a single lecture and come back. There is very little intercourse 
between Nome and Madison. Again: imagine a scholar 
of Georgetown, Maryland, in 1789, when there was no Dis¬ 
trict of Columbia, making a journey to the beautiful lakes 
in the central part of the territory of Indiana, lecturing 
there and returning to Georgetown. He could not have done it. 
Leaving out the fact that there were no people to lecture to, he 
would have died of the hardships of the journey, or the Indians 
would have scalped him, or the wolves would have eaten him up. 
There was no communication between the lakes of Indiana Terri¬ 
tory and Georgetown in 1789. Again: imagine a government 
drudge who takes care of musty old documents, a sort of valet 
de manuscrit, joyfully leaving Washington on Monday afternoon, 
arriving in Madison on Wednesday, fresh and well fed, in answer 
to an invitation to lecture extended to him by a gentleman who 
never heard him before—why, you see him before you! So it 
seems that Nome and Madison, now so far apart, are nearer to 
each other than Madison and Washington (neither of which 
existed) were in 1789, and that Washington and Madison 
are now alongside of each other. In 1789 the people of 
South Carolina were not influenced by the thought of Massa¬ 
chusetts; they did not know what it was. It will be re¬ 
called that Pierce Butler of South Carolina admitted in the 
Constitutional Convention that he had come to Philadel¬ 
phia prejudiced against eastern men. His prejudice was only 
natural, for probably he had never met a dozen eastern men in 
his life. The people of the different localities were so far apart, 
when the Constitution was made, that their interests were strongly 
localized, and, being different in the different localities, there was 
much rivalry and jealousy between the localities. It was certainly 
harder to fit a government to thirteen jealous states and their 
scattered, factional inhabitants, than it is to make it cover a 
united people in a fairly compact continent. 

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We have reached, then, this conclusion: If our government was 
good for the Americans of 1789, that is no reason why it should 
not be good for us; and the fact that the government is not easy 
to change has encouraged steadiness in progress and steady 
development of national character; the fact that it is limited in 
its sphere of activity has allowed the development on natural 
lines; it has been free from alien influences, and we have met our 
own problems without outside interference. 

The result has been that our development has been under the 
same governmental conditions for an unusually long period of 
time. The fact is that we now have the oldest government in 
the world. When our Constitution went into effect the king of 
England had the chief voice in the government of England. It 
was some years afterwards that the power which had been his 
passed finally to the House of Commons. It was in 1832 that the 
Reform Bill changed the whole theory of representation in the 
House of Commons. It cannot be contended that the American 
Constitution has ever undergone such fundamental modifications 
as the British constitution experienced when the king ceased to 
govern and the House of Commons became a democratic assem¬ 
blage. France was a monarchy in 1789; its present constitution 
is not thirty years old. Spain has a constitution which is not 
much older. The kingdom of Italy and the empire of Germany 
were founded after I was born; and so on down the list, even to 
the semi-Oriental power of Russia, where parliamentary govern¬ 
ment is now being introduced, and to the Far East where Japan 
and China have adopted governments of western form. 

IV 

Dr. Johnson being in savage mood one evening, roared out, 
“Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel!” and on several 
other occasions he expressed a general contempt for “patriots.” 
His remark has been often quoted and nearly always misunder¬ 
stood ; for, at the time he wrote and among his contemporaries, a 
“patriot” was a man who professed to hold devotion to his country 
as an obligation higher than devotion to the royal head of his 
country. One of the definitions of the word given by Dr. Johnson 
in his dictionary was “a factious disturber of the government.” 

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As he understood it, devotion to the country without devotion to 
the king was treason. The king and the country were one. 
I pick up a letter from one official to another in the government 
of South Carolina in 1736 and it begins: “After a man’s duties to 
God are performed, I think his most grand obligations are to his 
King and country.” When the Vicar of Wakefield gave his 
blessing to his son, who had just received a commission in the army 
he said: “ ‘And now, my boy,’ cried I, ‘thou art going to fight 
for thy country, remember how thy brave grandfather fought 
for his sacred king, when loyalty among Britons was a virtue.’ 

In paying a tribute to the British constitution, Macaulay said: 
“In our island the regular course of government has never been 
for a day interrupted. The few bad men who longed for license 
and plunder have not had the courage to confront for one moment 
the strength of a loyal nation, rallied in firm array round a 
parental throne.” 

The loyal nation and the parental throne went together; to 
fight for the sacred king was to fight for the country; a man’s 
grand obligations next to God were to the king and country 
together. 

But in America loyalty has not been understood in the John¬ 
sonian sense since 1776, and patriotism has been wholly dis¬ 
associated from the idea of a personal tie since Dr. Johnson’s 
“scoundrels” triumphed in 1783. Here it has meant simply love 
of “that abstract conception, one’s country,” and has been looked 
upon as the first of civic virtues. No public man has ever 
admitted that his public action had any other than a patriotic 
motive; no political party has ever announced a creed or con¬ 
structed a platform which did not profess to have patriotism as 
its foundation. A few individuals may have called it a prejudice; 
but so are most sentiments prejudices—family love, pride of race, 
fidelity to religion, for example. Others may have called it only 
a form of self-love, but so are they forms of self-love. It has 
been insisted that love of humanity is a more exalted passion; 
but love of humanity moves a few people only. There never was 
a political division of the world based upon it or kept alive by it. 

On the other hand, if we go far back in the history of the world 
we find that Dr. Johnson’s form of loyalty was once universal, 
and that it was the only form of patriotism that existed. It was 


The President of the United States 


an enlargement of the feeling of dependence and gratitude for 
protection which the child had for the father. The head of the 
house or the clan, or the patriarch of the tribe was the father of 
his people, protecting them and receiving their loyal devotion in 
return. The bond of nationality was the bond of kinship; whence 
arose the doctrine of citizenship by blood—the jus sanguinis of 
the Roman law. During the Middle Ages this was as much the 
basis of nationality as it had been in the ancient world. The 
nomad hordes were patriarchal groups, and their kings were 
always kings over the people and not over the land. This is 
shown by the titles surviving at the present day of some of the 
monarchs of Europe. The King of Belgium is King of the 
Belgians; of Denmark, King of Denmark and the Wendes and 
Goths; of Sweden, King of Sweden and the Goths and Vandals. 
But, as the nomadic age passed and the agricultural took its 
place, the man became more fixed in his place of abode and by the 
feudal system appurtenant to the soil. He drew all his sustenance 
from it and he became attached to it and gave it the affection and 
gratitude, which before had belonged only to his patriarch or king. 
Then he personified his country and called it she or her, as he did 
his wife and mother, and spoke of it as the fatherland. A new 
doctrine of nationality arose—that it was derived from the place 
of birth and domicile, the law of the soil, or the jus soli of the 
common law. 

America was settled after this doctrine had become fixed, and 
the emigrants had territorial patriotism as well as personal loyalty 
to their sovereign. But, naturally they transferred the feeling of 
love for the soil on which they had been born to the soil on which 
they lived, and from which their sustenance was derived. And 
here the feeling of personal loyalty had nothing to feed upon. 
The king lived thousands of miles away. His representatives 
came and went and nobody liked them; on the contrary, they were 
associated in the popular mind with ideas of disagreeable exactions 
and interference with popular desires. There were no people here 
immediately attached to the king’s person and deriving considera¬ 
tion and prestige on that account; there was no court to attend; 
there were no royal pageants to excite the admiration of the multi¬ 
tude; in short, there was nothing to remind the people of the 
power and splendor of their sovereign. A sentiment cannot live 

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forever upon report or recollection. The king became only a name 
to the Americans, and the sense of personal loyalty to him was 
strong in the hearts of only a few people. When the Revolution 
came, the Loyalists were for the most part people who had recently 
left England, or who belonged to the official class, or who had 
intimate family ties with England. The great body of the people 
threw off their personal allegiance without regret, having already 
lost it from their hearts. What took its place was a sense of Ameri¬ 
can nationality, which many elements combined to produce and 
encourage. The growth of that sense can be traced in a few words. 

As I said when I spoke of it as national public opinion, it was 
strong during the Revolution. It was called into being by common 
opposition to the parent country, or, to speak more accurately, by 
a common desire to be independent of the parent country. It 
weakened in the period of peace which followed, but was revived 
by the making of the Constitution and the discussion which pre¬ 
ceded its adoption. After that stimulation it fell back again, and 
old habits of thinking reasserted themselves. Americans had been 
colonists for more than a hundred and fifty years; they had been 
independent for less than twenty years. It was only natural that 
the interests which had filled their minds during the long period 
of colonial dependence should reappear. Those interests were in 
their localities and in the politics of Europe, upon which they had 
so long been dependent. They were not yet accustomed to their 
own national government, but regarded it with aloofness and a 
feeling of uncertainty. So, according to their predilections, many 
of them favored the old mother country, England, while others 
preferred their recent ally, France. The harsh treatment they 
received from both countries drove them unwillingly into hostility 
to both, and then a new generation of leaders came upon the 
stage, composed of young men who had been born since the 
Independence and had never had a mother country to love or hate. 
They carried the discordant elements into the War of 1812, and 
from it the country emerged emancipated from foreign politics, 
with a firmer sense of nationality than it had ever had before. The 
years following the peace of 1815 were its growing years. It be¬ 
came strong enough to meet and destroy the artificial barrier of 
the sectional institution of slavery; and since then has gone for¬ 
ward with no obstacles in its way, except such as arise from 

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prolonged peace and too rapid an advance in material prosperity. 

The elements from which it sprang were many. Chief among 
them, probably, was the sense of possession. The Americans cared 
for that which they felt was their own. This land was the property 
of the men who lived upon it. They had conquered it from the 
wilderness and from the Indians. They held it by grace of no 
man’s permission. 

I have already spoken of another cause of the growth of national 
feeling. The limited powers of the government left the people 
free to adapt themselves to the work of developing the land they 
had conquered in the most natural way, and, as the work went on, 
their outlook grew larger. When the national government started 
in its operations, the fear was general that it had too much power— 
that it would interfere with freedom of local action and weigh 
down the people with too many laws. So the first action taken 
with reference to it was to pass a number of amendments declara¬ 
tory of its limitations. These helped to dispel the fear, and ex¬ 
perience soon taught that it had been groundless. The govern¬ 
ment which was neither seen nor felt was only a gentle bond to 
keep the parts of the country together, without coercing any of 
them. So, as the country progressed, the government came to be 
associated with the idea of the progress and everybody became 
proud of it. One feature of it positively encouraged the growth of 
the idea and materially helped to produce the pride. 

As patriotism is a sentiment, an emotion, a passion, a very 
human thing, it must have some tangible object through which it 
can manifest itself. A flag or banner of particular pattern or 
colors, being a symbol of the national feeling, will call it up; but 
it is never wholly satisfied unless it can manifest itself through a 
human being. In the American system this demand was met by 
the creation of the office of president of the United States. The 
office intensified the American spirit, for the law required that 
no one should fill it who was not a natural-born American—that 
is to say, one who had never known any other thaji American 
allegiance. 

The office was the people’s own and never since their hero filled 
it has the sense of ownership diminished. Washington made it a 
place of responsibility and power and this arrangement was con¬ 
tinued, because it also involved concentration of accountability 

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and removed all complications from the way of the operation of 
public opinion. Individual senators in a body which started with 
twenty-two members; individual representatives in a body which 
started with sixty might escape from many of the consequences of 
the acts of bodies to which they belonged, but which they could 
not control; but the president could not escape from responsibility 
for acts which came within the accepted sphere of his duties. 
Public censure and approbation fell unerringly upon his head. 

And, as the office was the people’s own, they have had a jealous 
care lest any one should obtain possession of it, and deprive them 
of their ownership. Early in the history of the office it was decreed, 
without formal enactment, that no one should be reelected more 
than once; and, whenever the personal following of a president 
has shown a desire to continue him in office for more than two 
terms, the public voice has assumed a threatening tone towards 
those whom the public have suspected of a purpose to rob them of 
their control of their favorite political institution. 

Public censure as well as public approbation of the president 
has strengthened the sense of nationality for it has encouraged 
the people to cooperation and to feel dependence upon each other. 
Mrs. Humphrey Ward in one of her novels speaks of the good 
effect upon a person’s character of his being mad with something, 
and it is also true that popular indignation raises the natural 
character. What produces it with reference to the president is a 
conviction that he is feeble or timid in protecting the national 
interests, or supine in guarding what is held to be the national 
honor, or that he persists in administering the office in defiance 
of the national will. 

A greater force than popular censure of the president in raising 
the national character is popular approbation. The glow of 
admiration arouses the national pride and quiets all doubts of 
the reasonable basis of love of country. In “a loyal people 
rallying round a parental throne” Macaulay saw the strength of 
the British constitution. In a patriotic people rallying around 
the president lies much of the strength of the American system. 
When a president so conducts his office as to arouse the people’s 
enthusiasm and pride, when they see him administer it without 
selfish motive and only with the idea of guarding the national 
well-being, when they realize that through his zeal and skill the 

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standing and strength of the nation have been elevated in the view 
of other nations—then their patriotism rises to meet his own. 

I have spoken of the stability of the government and how little 
it has changed since it was inaugurated; but in no particular has 
it changed less than in the essential administration of the office of 
president. Weak incumbents have avoided responsibility where 
they could, strong presidents have accepted and even assumed 
responsibility; some have been leaders of public opinion and 
others have followed it; some have on occasion even defied it. 
Those are fluctuations which are inseparable from varying indi¬ 
vidual dispositions and minds; they have not affected the con¬ 
tinuous administration of the office under the same rules and 
with the same fundamental purpose. It would be difficult to 
find any vital point in which it is not now administered as George 
Washington administered it. 

In the first Congress under the Constitution there was an 
interesting debate over the question of the title which should be 
given to the president. The Senate proposed to call him “His 
Highness, The President of the United States and Protector of 
their Liberties,” but the House insisted upon the simple designa¬ 
tion “The President of the United States.” The Senate was 
not moved by any leaning towards royalty when it suggested a 
title which royalty might have assumed, but by a desire to give a 
title of dignity to an office of dignity; and when it called him 
protector of the liberties of the states it was thinking of the 
states as aggregations of the people rather than as separate 
political entities. The House could not have objected to this 
part of the title, except upon the ground that it was superfluous, 
for already it was generally agreed that the president was protector 
of the liberties of the people. 

And here I rest my case. I have shown you that the govern¬ 
ment which is neither felt nor seen, nevertheless provides an office 
which pervades even the remotest part of the country, and 
penetrates the intelligence of even the most ignorant citizens; 
that this office is the great binding force of all sections and 
all classes; that it was planned to be the people’s office, and 
circumstances combined to make it a more powerful and respon¬ 
sible office than those who planned it expected it to be, and that 
the chief circumstance in producing this result was that the 

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man who stood for the rising spirit of nationality in the new 
nation was the first to fill it. I have shown that it was continued 
in the direction which he gave it, because it provided the easiest 
and most natural way for public opinion to operate. I say that 
the president is the rallying point for the patriotism of the people; 
that the existence of the office has satisfied their natural craving 
for a person through whom to show their patriotism; and that 
no institution in our system has done more to stimulate patriotism 
and develop national character. 


